“For example, doctors of the Department of Health may use their outside office time to help the authority in their general out-patient clinics,” she said.

Describing the flu outbreak this year as “unusual”, Dr Cheung Wai-lun, the ­authority’s acting chief executive, said some 1,000 patients needed to be admitted to general medical wards of public hospitals every day for the past two weeks.

“Usually, such a situation would last about two or three days and we would be able to cope with it. But this year, it lasted for more than 10 days,” he was quoted by SCMP as saying.